The Supreme Court’s decision in Alberta (Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development) v. Cunningham has left me scratching my head a bit. It overturned an Alberta Court of Appeal decision that seemed quite sensible to me. (One of the things that got me thinking about “double dipping” — since it was one of the respondents’ arguments.)

The case arose because the Cunninghams, long-time residents of an Alberta Métis settlement, were removed from the settlement membership list after they registered as Indians. The Cunninghams had sought to be registered under the amended Indian Act in order to get access to . . . [more]

As a professional working in both official languages day in and day out, I found a recent study conducted by the Institut de recherche en économie contemporaine and the Institut de recherche sur le français en Amérique particularly interesting: nearly 14% of employees in Quebec’s education, health and public sectors predominantly use English as a language of work and this, with Anglophones only representing 9% of Quebec’s population (the study was based on the 2006 census). Moreover, less than half of these jobs are held by individuals who described themselves as Anglophones.

When compared to the reverse situation in Canada . . . [more]

The push towards the importance of work-life balance began during orientation week of my first year at law-school. Work-life balance (or study-life balance as it was back then) was emphasized as integral to surviving law school, and pursuing a healthy successful career. I recall one professor recommending that students should treat law school like a “9 to 5 job”. He suggested that students should spend the mornings and afternoons tackling classes and readings, so that they could use their evenings to unwind, socialize and pursue their favourite hobbies. I took my professors advice, recognizing that there were days that I . . . [more]

Here are the three most consulted cases on CanLII for the week of November 1 – 7.

1. Sam’s Auto Wrecking and Lombard General Insurance, 2011 ONSC 6441
   

   [12] The central issue is whether or not the personal injury experienced by Mr. Ferber, indirectly at the hands of an employee at Sam’s operating within the scope of his employment, was or should have been covered by the commercial general liability which was part of the comprehensive business policy provided by Lombard.

2. Tuchenhagen v. Mondaux, 2011 ONSC 5398
   

   [1] During the month of July 2008, the City of Thunder Bay

Loads of lawyers and law firms are posting content in various forms all over the Web. Firm websites, LinkedIn or Facebook updates, tweets, blog posts and comments, and so on. That is great, but it only gets you partway down the path to greater visibility on the Internet.

At the most basic level, the cornerstone to making yourself more visible is good content and linking. Do you know why linking is so important? Do you understand the ranking factors Google and other search engines use to determine what content appears at the top of search results? Are your links trusted . . . [more]

My post this week comes to you from the posh Millenium Hotel in Knightsbridge, London, where the organizers of IBC’s 3rd annual trust litigation symposium (brochure) have been kind enough to instal their speakers and panelists.

My panel “Caught in the Wrong & Possibly Putting it Right” is on a 2011decision of the UK Court of Appeal in two cases in which that court said the law had taken a “seriously wrong turn” over the last few decades. (My post on this decision – 12 September). The panel’s job is to air views on the likely impact of . . . [more]

Over at the Small Firm Innovation blog there’s been a number of terrific posts with some of the legal industry’s top minds sharing their thoughts on time management.

Niki Black kicks the discussion off with a discussion of how the just-released iPhone 4S’s digital assistant Siri can be used to more efficiently manage our time. Niki describes how Siri’s voice recognition facilities not only allow iPhone 4S users to efficiently and easily create appointments, tasks to help with managing their time, but how they can save time by dictating these items while we would otherwise be unproductive (such as while . . . [more]

Last month the respected German national newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) published an exposé in its Sunday edition Feuilleton about a German government computer surveillance program introduced into citizens’ computers some years ago and the ease with which it can be cracked and misused. The Staatstrojaner, or “state trojan,” is a key-logging program that can record everything entered into an infected computer via the keyboard, and, in this case I believe, control the computer to some degree.

The newspaper’s exposé is available in English as a PDF file via Edge.

To uncover and reverse engineer the trojan, FAZ teamed up . . . [more]

Cloud computing is often portrayed as an online-only world that enables a high degree of collaboration for lawyers. Here’s a reality check. That is not how many, perhaps most, lawyers practice and that perspective can fog some of the possibilities of blending your office technology with cloud-based systems. While software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a significant offering in the cloud world, with some strong companies dedicated to providing legal practice management applications, there are a number of other opportunities that require less dramatic changes to your practice.

One of the significant benefits to cloud computing is that it enables an as well . . . [more]

According to Victims of Violence the number of incidents of reported elder abuse increased by 14% since 2004. A third of these are committed by family members. Over 13% of the Canadian population is over 65, meaning elder abuse will be a growing concern.

One incident of alleged elder abuse that we will not have to worry about any more are the allegations against Brian Corrin, who was charged in February of this year on the accusations that an incident of family violence resulted in injuries to the Winnipeg Justice’s 89 year-old mother.

Based on contradictory testimony and the . . . [more]

♫ You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world …♫

Lyrics and music by Lennon/McCartney, recorded by The Beatles.

CTV.ca has released the complete text of the demands of the Occupy Vancouver protestors. A number of their demands are in the legal area, so I thought I would highlight a few of them from their total list of 60:

12. We demand that corporate person-hood is repealed.

I am not quite sure what they mean…the elimination . . . [more]

Yale law library’s Open Access publishing initiative produces enormous download rates for its authors, and makes the material available to scholars and others all over the world, without regard to their location or their institution’s budgetary priorities.

And many US libraries have taken this step: 55% of libraries in a just-released SPARC survey. Some other highlights:

• About three-quarters of the programs publish between one and six journals, the majority of which are only distributed electronically
• The vast majority of library publishing programs (almost 90%) were launched in order to contribute to change in the scholarly publishing system, supplemented by